Wednesday, May 23, 2001

KATHMANDU, May 22[2001] - Nearly 17,000 land-less people living in various areas of the Kathmandu Valley are threatening to take to the streets if the government fails to provide them ownership certificates of land they have squatted upon for years. But, the issue being a complex one, officials are still muddled in their response.

The squatters are asking the government to let them live on the river banks legitimately where they have been doing so for the past two or three decades. "Otherwise, we will take to the streets and will even launch demonstrations," said Dipak Rai, the secretary of Nepal Settlement Protection Society (NSPS), one of several squatters’ organizations in the Kathmandu Valley.

However, government agencies have been muddled in their response. Over a dozen of government commissions have been formed to solve the squatters’ problem in the last one and a half-decade. But none of them have focused on finding a solution to the problem of Kathmandu squatters.

Member secretary of the present Squatters’ Problem Resolution Commission, Tirtha Prasad Ligal said finding solution for the squatters of the Kathmandu Valley is not their responsibility. But he does concede, "The problem is quite complicated. The squatters’ problem in the Capital is artificial and only a bold decision can solve it."

But Rai, the general secretary of Nepal Settlement Protection Society (NSPS), refutes such claims. "We left our villages because the property we had was not adequate enough to meet all our needs. It is for the government to provide us food, cloth and shelter in the city." But he admits that many are not as pathetic as they appear to be. "Many of the landless people here have lands in their villages and some of them have huts in several settlements here."

The trend of squatting on public land - generally on the river banks - started in 1960s, thanks to the quiet encouragement given by the local representatives in the hope of creating vote bank. But more than three decades later, the squatters’ problem in Kathmandu has become a ticking time bomb.

Along the banks of the Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers, several squatters’ villages have cropped up, becoming an eyesore to metropolitan authorities. NSPS volunteers say that there are nearly 17,000 landless people living in 66 settlements in the Capital city, each of them comprising of up to 186 slum households. The biggest is Pathivara Tole behind Chabahil. Other noteworthy settlements with over 100 households are Ramhiti, Bauddha, Sankhamul, Khadipakha of Maharajgunj and Jagriti Tole of Nayabazar, Balaju.

Along with the poor families, many well-off squatters live in huts or concrete houses with colour TVs and even motorcycles. They say that they work as drivers, labourers and shopkeepers. Some are even employed as government staff, teachers, soldiers, police and so on.

The squatters’ organization defines themselves as those who have had to come to the Capital displaced by natural calamities. At the same time, there are those who came in search of better opportunities leaving their parental properties behind in the villages.

The Kathmandu Mayor, Keshav Sthapit, says he is drawing up a plan to bring all the squatters under a system. "This problem is in an alarming state. We will verify the squatters first and if they are found possessing landed property in the villages, then we will confiscate their land."

The metropolitan authorities plan to provide alternative land at minimum cost to the squatters. "However, they must first abandon the river banks for this is not a proper place to live in," Mayor Sthapit said.

But the squatters are unlikely to heed his call just yet. Part of the reason is, along with the free land, they also get free basic services from well-meaning non-governmental organizations. The Lumanti Support Group for Shelter (LSGS), for instance, is providing free education, water and sanitation to squatters in several areas. Critics say, such free schemes could become a magnet to attract more squatters.

Director of LSGS Lajana Manandhar said that the organization is helping the "urban poor" community. "The government must make a policy to control the flow of people to the city and help manage the existing unmanaged settlements," she said.[Kathmandu Wednesday May 23, 2001 Jestha 10, 2058.]

KATHMANDU, May 22[2001] - Nearly 17,000 land-less people living in various areas of the Kathmandu Valley are threatening to take to the streets if the government fails to provide them ownership certificates of land they have squatted upon for years. But, the issue being a complex one, officials are still muddled in their response.

The squatters are asking the government to let them live on the river banks legitimately where they have been doing so for the past two or three decades. "Otherwise, we will take to the streets and will even launch demonstrations," said Dipak Rai, the secretary of Nepal Settlement Protection Society (NSPS), one of several squatters’ organizations in the Kathmandu Valley.

However, government agencies have been muddled in their response. Over a dozen of government commissions have been formed to solve the squatters’ problem in the last one and a half-decade. But none of them have focused on finding a solution to the problem of Kathmandu squatters.

Member secretary of the present Squatters’ Problem Resolution Commission, Tirtha Prasad Ligal said finding solution for the squatters of the Kathmandu Valley is not their responsibility. But he does concede, "The problem is quite complicated. The squatters’ problem in the Capital is artificial and only a bold decision can solve it."

But Rai, the general secretary of Nepal Settlement Protection Society (NSPS), refutes such claims. "We left our villages because the property we had was not adequate enough to meet all our needs. It is for the government to provide us food, cloth and shelter in the city." But he admits that many are not as pathetic as they appear to be. "Many of the landless people here have lands in their villages and some of them have huts in several settlements here."

The trend of squatting on public land - generally on the river banks - started in 1960s, thanks to the quiet encouragement given by the local representatives in the hope of creating vote bank. But more than three decades later, the squatters’ problem in Kathmandu has become a ticking time bomb.

Along the banks of the Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers, several squatters’ villages have cropped up, becoming an eyesore to metropolitan authorities. NSPS volunteers say that there are nearly 17,000 landless people living in 66 settlements in the Capital city, each of them comprising of up to 186 slum households. The biggest is Pathivara Tole behind Chabahil. Other noteworthy settlements with over 100 households are Ramhiti, Bauddha, Sankhamul, Khadipakha of Maharajgunj and Jagriti Tole of Nayabazar, Balaju.

Along with the poor families, many well-off squatters live in huts or concrete houses with colour TVs and even motorcycles. They say that they work as drivers, labourers and shopkeepers. Some are even employed as government staff, teachers, soldiers, police and so on.

The squatters’ organization defines themselves as those who have had to come to the Capital displaced by natural calamities. At the same time, there are those who came in search of better opportunities leaving their parental properties behind in the villages.

The Kathmandu Mayor, Keshav Sthapit, says he is drawing up a plan to bring all the squatters under a system. "This problem is in an alarming state. We will verify the squatters first and if they are found possessing landed property in the villages, then we will confiscate their land."

The metropolitan authorities plan to provide alternative land at minimum cost to the squatters. "However, they must first abandon the river banks for this is not a proper place to live in," Mayor Sthapit said.

But the squatters are unlikely to heed his call just yet. Part of the reason is, along with the free land, they also get free basic services from well-meaning non-governmental organizations. The Lumanti Support Group for Shelter (LSGS), for instance, is providing free education, water and sanitation to squatters in several areas. Critics say, such free schemes could become a magnet to attract more squatters.

Director of LSGS Lajana Manandhar said that the organization is helping the "urban poor" community. "The government must make a policy to control the flow of people to the city and help manage the existing unmanaged settlements," she said.[Kathmandu Wednesday May 23, 2001 Jestha 10, 2058.]

Saturday, May 12, 2001

KATHMANDU, May 11 – The tendency of Nepalis to overindulge in whatever is the flavour of the month is now extending to Buddhist gombas (monasteries), worrying archaeology and cultural experts.

The case in point is the construction of yet another monastery on the hill of Swoyambhunath, which critics say, is in violation of the Swoyambhunath Conservation Master Plan (Swoyambhu 2000), recognised by the Ministry of Culture in 1989.

The master plan proposed strict controls on new construction 11 years ago but no such check has been put in place. As a result, new gombas are sprouting here and there on the Swoyambhu hill and also across the Valley.

Devi Prasad Adhikari, the Archive Officer of Monastery Management and Development Committee (MMDC), said that the number of monasteries in the Capital has grown exponentially in the past decade.

A survey shows that there were only 49 monasteries in Kathmandu district a decade ago. "But the number might be between 200 to 300 by now," says Adhikari.

Even the community groups, which normally ought to welcome the emergence of new gombas, are not happy with this trend. Raju Lama, the chairperson of Ghyang Guthi, just one such group at Swoyambhu, said that the construction of Lamaistic monasteries in the central as well as surrounding foothills of the Kathmandu Valley has gone beyond control. "Their growth has hit the maximum limit," he said.

The director general of Department of Archaeology (DOA), Sanu Maiya Rana admits that the department has failed to control such activities. "We tried to control it, but couldn’t succeed."

No one can pinpoint exactly why so many monasteries are coming up, but they say that most of the funds are pouring in from outside for the construction of new monasteries. Even though, the permission to build new gombas is required from the municipality or the concerned Village Development Committee. Yet in many cases, construction is being carried out without such permission.

At the heart of the debate is whether such large number of monasteries are needed for the relatively small number of Lamaist Buddhist adherents in the Kathmandu Valley.

"How many gombas does this valley need," asks Buddha Ratna Bajracharya, a pilgrim at Swoyambhunath. "Why can’t they share the same gomba for praying?"

Bajracharya says that the growing number of Tibetan-style monasteries is the indication of the flow of migrants, either from neighbouring countries like Tibet (China) and Bhutan or from other mountainous districts of Nepal. "Making of a monastery gives them a means to live here permanently," he says, adding that it also provides them an opportunity to squat upon public land.

But such talk is brushed aside by other interest groups. Ratna Bahadur Bajracharya, the chairman of Swoyambhu Renovation and Management Federation, supports the construction of more such monasteries on the Swoyambhu hill saying that they at least protect the hills "from being messy."

Although Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has no specific programme to bring this mushrooming of monasteries under control, Mayor Keshav Sthapit said that he is prepared to take some necessary steps to control it.

"If nobody does anything to control this cultural encroachment in the city, I am ready to do something to bring them under regulation," he said.

Construction of a religious shrine compatible with the local surrounding can be taken as value-adding for conservation, he says. "But if this takes the shape of competition, it is sure to degrade the natural landscape."12/05/2001

Tuesday, May 01, 2001

KATHMANDU, May 30 - Thousands and thousands idols stolen from Nepal, mainly from Kathmandu Valley and its vicinity, since the 1950s are waiting their return home from various museums in Europe and the Americas. Yet the authorities seem to be nonchalant about it.

Knowledgeable experts claim, between 50 to 60 per cent of the Valley’s works of art have been stolen in the last five decades. And, little has been done by the government to restore the pre-historic images of such deities as the Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwora, Durgabhawani, Laxmi and so on to their original places.

Not that it is impossible to return the stolen heritages. Many of the new western owners have returned a dozen such stolen idols in recent years. Examples abound. A 11th-century idol of Uma Maheshor was returned in September 2000 after about 18 years in a German museum, barely a year after another American antique-collector returned three ancient images of Hindu deities that were stolen from various temples of the Valley. The American returned the idols in August last year.

"We have never tried to use the convention from our sides," said an officer at Department of Archaeology, the body responsible for preserving and protecting the countries’ cultural heritages. The process of claiming such stolen images needs certain "diplomatic channels". But, in the past three decades, Nepali government has not even decided who and how the present owners of the Nepali artefact should be reached, the officer said.

The concerned authorities are shedding off their shoulders from even sending application letters, the basic requirement to go through the long procedure that includes two countries and the international institution working for the conservation of heritage.

United Nation’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched steps to curb this international trade of artefact as early as 30 years ago.

The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibition and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, was the first international legal instrument to tackle these issues of world’s concern. There are 91 state parties, including Nepal, signatories to the convention.

According to the Convention, the State Party of origin requires to go through diplomatic channels and with evidence to its claim, another State Party will seize and return cultural property on its territory stolen from a museum, religious institution or public monument. And the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects enhances the former convention’s resolutions.

Prof Kumar Khatri, the former chief of Central Department of Culture at Tribhuwan University said that Nepali government has enough grounds to claim those countless images scattered in so many museums, private collections and curio shops around the World. "We have rights to bring them back. But the crux of the problem is that even the government authorities are ignorant of the international convention."

Khagendra Basnet, the secretary-general of Nepal National Commission for UNESCO said that it is not the commission’s duty to retrieve stolen artefacts.

Gyan Chandra Acharya, the spokesperson of Foreign Ministry, said bringing such artefact according the convention is not easy. "In principle, those owners should return the idols, but we can’t ask them to return all just because they were taken away from Nepal," he said.

Former Ambassador to France and permanent representative to UNESCO Keshav Raj Jha said that we have not been able to utilise the provisions of the convention, though it was made especially for countries like Nepal that has been a constant victim of illicit trade of cultural objects.

"Only a channelled application is needed to find out our property. UNESCO and other institutions have a network to find out such items world-wide and finding is not very difficult too," he said.

He claimed that Nepali government does not want to claim such stolen artefact because "some high-profile people, some above legal restrictions, are responsible in smuggling them out".

He recalled that when he was the Ambassador to France he saw an ancient wooden image and wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nepal with needed documents of evidences to stake a claim. "But after a year or so, I got an irresponsible reply which suggested me to read a book on stolen images and do the needful accordingly,"

Art theft is not only the problem of Nepal. UNESCO reports state that between 30,000 and 40,000 cultural objects are stolen each year in France and Italy. In 1995, insurance companies in the United Kingdom paid out nearly one billion US Dollars for artwork stolen in that country.